First, I just want to clarify that this is not a politics site. It’s a site about cars. But sometimes those two entities collide a bit, like orange cones and anything I’m driving at an autocross. A collision like this happened about a year ago, and it had to do with gas mileage, gas prices, fuel tank sizes, and a New York congressional candidate named George Santos. Back then, I happened to notice that he seemed to be, oh, full of shit, and now the news is slathered with stories about how this dipshit seems to have lied about, well, pretty much everything on his resumé. So, I’m going to gloat, because I called this guy out over a year ago, because he lied about gas usage. And you can never trust anyone who lies about how much gas they use.
Here’s what happened: Last December, then-candidate George Santos tweeted this (the original tweet has been deleted, but this was the text):
My full gas tank is $83 and I fuel on average 3 times a week.
83×3=249
249×52=12,948Last year my gas tank was $54.
54×3=162
162×52=8,424Joe Biden’s policies made my expenses go up $4,524.00 and that America is only on gas!
America can’t afford Joe and his socialist agenda.
— George Santos (@Santos4Congress) December 11, 2021
He then followed that up with some more explanation, and that tweet somehow still exists:
Here’s some more math…
My car requires premium gas. I live in the most congested city on the east coast, I travel into Manhattan daily and then campaign into Long Island for my congressional race 7 days a week.
I’m paying about 3.90-4.10 a gallon and get about 13-15 MPG.— George Santos (@Santos4Congress) December 13, 2021
This all seemed weird to me at the time, and we later, with the help of readers, were able to determine that Santos drove a Nissan Pathfinder, which has a 21.1 gallon gas tank and gas mileage of 13 city/18 mpg highway for the V8. So, if this dude really filled up his tank three times a week, like he claimed, he’d be driving, oh, about 260 miles per tank, so 780 miles per week. That’s on the low end of the mpg scale. At 15 mpg, full tank three times a week is close to 900 miles.
Santos lives in Long Island. There’s 780 miles of road on Long Island. So, if what this guy was saying is true, he’d have to drive every inch of road in Long Island every week, plus a bit extra.
[Editor’s Note: I’d just like to pop in here and say that “Politician lies” is kinda obvious and I’d rather keep our articles away from politics, but JT really, really wanted a victory lap, here. And I can’t tell him no, so just bear with us please. -DT].
But, it’s clearly not true. He’d never leave his car!
Anyway, I called this jackass out way back then, and he won his race anyway, so good for him, except now everyone is noticing that his resumé and records of his past works seem to be full of fabrications and lies, ranging from a fake animal charity to all this stuff mentioned by the BBC, who I picked because, you know, they don’t have skin in this game:
The initial New York Times report indicated key parts were either contradicted or not supported by evidence. He claimed during his campaign that he had worked at high-profile Wall Street firms Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, and had received his education at New York City’s Baruch College.
But when contacted by the newspaper, and later other outlets including CNN and NPR, these entities found no record of the 34-year-old.
Mr Santos also issued campaign statements in favour of landlords and claimed his family was being shirked by renters during the pandemic, but his financial disclosure forms reportedly did not list any properties in his possession.
In his financial disclosure forms this year, he reportedly listed his salary as $750,000 (£617,000) and said it was paid by the Devolder Organization. There is little public detail about the company, which is registered in Florida and was recently deemed “inactive”.
Yeah, that’s a lot. And, let me remind you of the whole point of this post, I’m gloating because a year ago this guy was being skeevy about his fuel usage in his Pathfinder, and I told you about it. Shouldn’t someone have maybe followed up on the bigger stuff?
Santos did issue a statement via his attorney about all this:
“George Santos represents the kind of progress than the Left is so threatened by – a gay, Latino, first generation American and Republican who won a Biden district in overwhelming fashion by showing everyday voters that there is a better option than the broken promises and failed policies of the Democratic Party. After four years in the public eye, and on the verge of being sworn in as a member of the Republican led 118th Congress, the New York Times launches this shotgun blast of attacks.
It is no surprise that Congressman-elect Santos has enemies at the New York Times who are attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations. As Winston Churchill famously stated, ‘You have enemies? Good. It means that you’ve stood up for something, sometime in you life.'”
As has been pointed out, Winston Churchill didn’t say that quote. Victor Hugo said it, only in French. Come on, dude, at least try.
So, yeah, pay attention to what people say about their gas mileage. If they’re lying about that, don’t vote them into congress.
Well DT & JT Look what you have done! ¯\_(⊙ _ʖ⊙)_/¯
Just look at the comments here on this thread. I come to this website to ESCAPE POLITICAL rants and division ! (⩺︷⩹)
DT, always trust your first instinct!!
::Surveys the festering pile that was once this article’s comment section:: Sigh… Torch, *this* is why this site shouldn’t indulge in political posts. One of the foundational premises of this site is that cars unite. Political tribalism divides, as you can see. Whether you were right or not has nothing to do with it (alas, alas…) when there are D’s and R’s in the article.
Now please go and apologize to David, hat-in-hand.
P.S. I love this site and want to help support what you’re doing. Expect a membership incoming for me soon.
C’mon guys. Everything is political. Cars are political as hell, and car culture is caught in a political shift like we hadn’t seen since the days when cars first became affordable to the masses. Don’t apologize for political posts. Even the least politically motivated post will touch on things that are very much political, whether we realise it or not.
This is a website that often glorifies people’s cars, sometimes to an unrealistic degree – it feels like part of the ethos of the website – and I’m the first one to admit that I do glorify people’s cars to an unrealistic degree, so this isn’t a critique as much as it is an admission of my own car politics, and how they align with those of The Autopian (and I mean the website, not the founders’ or writers’ personal politics).
People in the comments complaining about “political” posts aren’t complaining that the posts are political; they’re complaining that the politics of the post don’t align with their own. That’s not a good enough reason to try to shutdown political discourse altogether.
No, everything is not political, unless you want to shred the meaning of the word political. What killed the old site was the absolutely brain-dead and childish political takes and the injection of political snark into articles unrelated to politics.
Not up for debate sorry, it’s long been established that everything’s political, it’s the nature of things. You trying to defend not everything is political is a deeply political statement, you just laid out your broad political views in a short paragraph whether you like it or not.
Long been established by brain-dead dipshits.
This is a slippery slope. Next we’ll be debating about religion….
https://www.theautopian.com/your-guide-to-keeping-peace-during-mixed-happy-honda-days-toyotathon-family-gatherings/
Having a flash-back to the other site or FB.
Trudeau is a petulant man-child. His Carbon Tax is crushing us at the pumps!
Sorry. I just wanted to get in on the shitposting.
Don’t you get a carbon tax refund? So the only real way it “costs” you is if you use more than an average amount of carbon?
And I generally consider myself somewhat Libertarian, but I support a carbon tax. Polluting the environment and using its resources should cost something.
I agree.
Same. Libertarian here that doesn’t necessarily trust that the EPA does a good job of protecting the environment, but I absolutely abhor subsidizing externalized costs; whether that be effects of pollution or subsidizing Amazon through the interstate system. All costs, as much as possible, should be paid at point of sale. To do otherwise removes information available to the consumer to make good decisions and we might as well stop pretending to be capitalist.
Lots of people love Trudeau. I see flags everywhere with people saying they want to have sex with him.
“Biden caused high gas prices” is pretty standard politicking. In other words, it doesn’t need to be true for a politician to utter it.
If you can stand Tiktok, watch this guy’s videos: https://www.tiktok.com/@mrglobaltoo
He doesn’t have a party affiliation (despite what commentors want to believe) but he is in the oil industry and has pretty good explanations for why gas prices are they way they are. Surprise surprise, the reasons have a lot to do with politicians, hence commenters losing their shit.
This guy expects me to believe that he makes $750k a year but he drives a Nissan Pathfinder? What?!?
Good job JT! And yes, you are right to gloat about it even if some folk have a difficult time with the unavoidable political element. You called out a liar who was obviously misusing automotive math for political gain, as you should. If you catch any dems doing the same, you should flambe them equally.
Thanks for saving the time of writing the exact same comment.
????
And apparently you get ???? if there’s a winking emoji in your comment.
Someone blaming gas prices on Biden when there’s a war going on affecting the global economy, turns out to be full of shit and less than reputable?
Color me shocked.
Politics are a drag and I try to avoid them…. however… after January 6th happened and I saw terrorists storm our capital building to capture/harm politicians they disagreed with and fly flags of our defeated enemies….. ehhhh, yeah fuck that whole party. Not really on the blue team either, but I have a limit and January 6th was it. Oh and if you get mad at this post, it’s not my fault, just blame Biden like you guys do for literally everything you don’t understand.
Republicans are brainwashed.
Liberals are brainwashed.
Republicans are deluded.
Interesting. Never heard of this santos guy but judging how torch gets when he claims he’s trying to “not be political”, I can guess the party affiliation of this guy.
Tip: when you have to preface article by saying “this isn’t a political site” you’re about to @#*€ up.
“this is not a politics site”
Dammit! I’m running out of places to bitch about Reagan.
JT, I am begging you not to go down this rabbit hole of politics!
I am by no means saying you are wrong with your facts, or anything about this politician is remotely “not full of shit”, but you guys don’t want to do this.
You can tell from just the relatively small amount of comments already in here, that there is no benefit to this type of blog entry. It will only divide what is a really nice and caring community into a bunch of antagonistic and argumentative…well, arguments. Members will start discounting each other’s takes on cars (no matter how valid) because they have developed a preconceived notion about another member that they have most likely never met in real life.
It will ruin what you all spent quite some time building, and frankly just started to tweak it in the right ways to make it amazing.
Please don’t sully the joint. It’s a fucking bad idea.
your pal,
getstoneyII
This is a bad take. Calling out liars isn’t political.
“a fake animal charity”… The Animal Fund. Money for Animals. (Seinfeld joke for those not in the know.)
Magna Cum Lade at Vandelay University.
On a completely unrelated note:
WIRED: 2020 Thirty-Six Pack of Charmin Mega Rolls
TIRED: Holy Grail
Who’s with me?!
Is his even ‘George Santos’? Has anyone checked his birth certificate? At this point I think it’s worth a look.
I would really rather not read about politics or worthless politicians on Autopian. It’s such a great and unique site that any political content is unnecessary and out of place. Doesn’t fit the established Autopian ethos, which is why we’re all here. Every political article is one less great Autopian themed article.
Agree to disagree
If you would rather not read some of the articles, you don’t have to read all of them.
This was a nice update in my eyes, given that I did not remember that it was this guy who’d so blatantly lied about his gas use. Good to connect those dots.
Per the Autopian TOS, you’re supposed to click on every article and read every word.
I think Torch deserves a victory lap here.
Red Flag #1: Wall Street doesn’t hire from Baruch. Not for Wall Street positions anyway.
If he’s a smart liar he should have gone for something like Northwestern. A good enough school, but no MIT and unlikely to raise suspicion.
Red flag #2 being gay and right wing is top level self hating.
This!
At this rate, I won’t be surprised he’s neither.
Not to be pedantic, but it’s 720 miles of STATE roads. From the NYT article: “State highway officials, whose 720 miles of roads on Long Island carry nearly half its traffic…”
Without even trying to figure it out for sure, I’d wager Brooklyn alone has 1000 miles of local roads.
Yup. Nassau County alone maintains 1600 miles of roads. Don’t stop JT now, though, he’s riffing.
https://www.nassaucountyny.gov/4743/My-Roads
I saw a lot of friends sharing the text of that initial tweet last year. When I corrected the math for every single one of them the response was always, “well, yeah, but the point is the gas is more expensive! Let’s Go Brandon!!!” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Change friends.
You can’t talk hard facts like math to people in an alternate reality.
Well if we dont elect liars we will never elect anyone at all. They are all liars. Of course using the NYT as bastion of honesty doesnt help. That rag has run a true fact since they corrected their Dewey defeats Truman story. But he was at least honest about the price of gas. Nationwide prices went up about $2 a gallon under Biden. Now it has come down about 50 cents so still up $1.50 a gallon but every hollar Biden is beating the inflation he caused.
Prices went down under Trump because there was a pandemic he actively made worse, you jackass. Fiscal recovery caused prices to return to where they were prior. But go ahead stick your fingers in your ears it’s all people like you can do.
Oh good, one of the first “this is not a politics site” post and we are already have name calling.
Please stop now, all of you. Let’s not turn this amazing oasis into another car site I won’t read anymore.
You should direct your ire at that moron, Dave Horchak, for starting the shitshow.
I was gonna say, as if most of the times the name calling doesn’t start with our resident troll DH. Who are they beefing with these days? Is it still andyindividual? I just scroll down whenever I see block of text the size of the whole page with his name at the beginning nowadays.
Just blame Biden, bro. Everything is his fault, or so I’ve been told.
“we are already have name calling.”
I disagree. What you say is ‘name calling’ looks to me more like ‘describing someone accurately’.
“Dewey Defeats Truman” was the Chicago Tribune, not the NY Times.
There’s a little something called war that helped cause the WORLDWIDE inflation.
No! Enough with the facts!
Don’t you know that inflation is exactly one person’s fault, and that person is whoever you’re running against in an election? At least this is what the political ads in my area would indicate.
Dude Trump pushed for higher gas prices with Opec. I hate getting into politics but as someone who drives a car with premium I keep on eye on things. Now Opec is fucking us over.
https://epic.uchicago.edu/news/column-trumps-push-for-higher-gas-prices-is-misguided/
http://activehistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/1948_DeweyDefeatsTruman569761.jpg
It’s cute that you can’t comprehend the difference between a newspaper making a mistake nearly a century ago and Rupert Murdoch’s evil empire that intentionally napalms us with lies and slander 24/7 in perpetuity.
Wouldn’t you feel more relevant over at Infowars?
The NYT is a hallowed institution, unless you’re Rupert Murdoch. They’re truly the fourth estate, a pillar that holds democracy up.
The only people I know disparaging the NYT are those with things to hide.
Bad take Dave strikes again. Please read the comments, understand your opinions have no value and find somewhere else to spout your bling ignorance. Thank you and Merry Christmas.
Inflation right now is a global problem as a result of covid. It’s also far worse in other countries. But, you either only watch Fox or you already knew that.
I don’t get why he’d lie about something that is so easily disprovable. Did he not think anyone might think “hm that doesn’t sound right” and then look up the figures? Sure, all politicians lie, but usually not about things that can be so easily disproven.
Politicians constantly lie about stuff that’s easily disproved. Since this isn’t a politics site, I don’t want to elaborate, but really, I see this all the time from politicians of both major parties.
In the case of this particular guy – apparently he figured it wouldn’t be noticed before the election, and apparently, he was right.
I can’t tell if he’s full of hubris or really macro smart, micro stupid. If it’s the latter, he probably bet he could toss out complete nonsense and rely as his status as the intersection of several usual Dem constituencys to keep them from checking his BS out reflexively, since doing so without finding smoking guns may have soured said constituents.
I’m betting on hubris, because he just doesn’t seem that smart.
This guy lied about a lot, but nobody checked him on it.
Its not *that* crazy for people in certain industries, I’ve been averaging 800 miles a week in my Hyundai since the end of February (mostly business miles), plus another 150-200 a week in my Chevy during that same time (almost all personal), so I’m very much in the 900+ mile a week club. But, I’m also not a state legislator.
Yep I was easily spending about as much as he claimed for a few weeks before I got my commuter. $5 gas, 15mpg, 90ish miles a weekday and ~200 a weekend will do that. But I don’t live in New York so I can feasibly drive that much. Thankfully that’s not an every week thing for me.
The company required me to buy a new car earlier this year, so I finally broke down and bought a hybrid, 600 miles to a tank now
A hybrid seems perfect for that much driving. Did you find any clear advantages/downsides to that option yet? I’m very interested in firsthand accounts of people who recently moved to electric tech (be it full electric, PHEV or regular hybrids). From your comment it seems like you felt “pushed” to go for a hybrid, so I’m curious about whether it won you over or not.
I wasn’t exactly pushed, more just that everything I actually wanted didn’t comply with the company’s rules, so I figured if I had to buy something I didn’t want anyway, might as well go for fuel economy. TBH, with that sort of mileage, it was probably the rational choice anyway. I’ve been doing this 12-13 years, but half of that time was with a company car and gas card, so I didn’t have to care
The good news is I’m pretty sure my actual per-mile driving cost is less than the reimbursement, or at least very close.
Our delivery trucks will run 700-1000 miles a week. Maybe this guy was stretching the truth in his case, but that kind of mileage is easily attainable for someone who drives for a living.
His idiot supporters won’t care, even when presented with the truth.
He literally lied about everything in his life – fake jobs, fake statements about employees being killed at the Pulse nightclub shooting, fake Baruch degree. Like, the lies come so fast and so easy that he makes other politicians look like Anne of Green Gables. It’s funny, because he is all over the news right now but I had completely missed that this was the 900 miles per week guy.